THE SHORT COURSE SERIES 



THE STORY OF JOSEPH 



GENERAL PREFACE 



The title of the present series is a sufficient 
indication of its purpose. Few preachers, 
or congregations, will face the long courses 
of expository lectures which characterised 
the preaching of the past, but there is a 
growing conviction on the part of some 
that an occasional short course, of six or 
eight connected studies on one definite 
theme, is a necessity of their mental and 
ministerial life. It is at this point the pro- 
jected series would strike in. It would 
suggest to those who are mapping out a 
scheme of work for the future a variety of 
subjects which might possibly be utilised in 
this way. 

The appeal, however, will not be restricted 
to ministers or preachers. The various 
volumes will meet the needs of laymen and 

ii 



General Preface 

Sabbath-school teachers who are interested 
in a scholarly but also practical exposition 
of Bible history and doctrine. In the hands 
of office-bearers and mission-workers the 
" Short Course Series " may easily become 
one of the most convenient and valuable 
of Bible helps. 

It need scarcely be added that while an 
effort has been made to secure, as far as 
possible, a general uniformity in the scope 
and character of the series, the final re- 
sponsibility for the special interpretations 
and opinions introduced into the separate 
volumes, rests entirely with the individual 
contributors. 

A detailed list of the authors and their 
subjects will be found at the close of each 
volume. 



Ill 



Volumes Already Published 



A Cry for Justice: A Study in Amos. 

By Prof. John E. McFadyen, D.D. 

The Beatitudes. 

Rev. Robert H. Fisher, D.D. 

The Lenten Psalms. 
By the Editor. 

The Psahn of Psalms. 

By Prof. James Stalker, D.D. 

The Song and the Soil. 

By Prof. W. G. Jordan, D.D. 

The Higher Powers of the Soul. 

By Rev. George M'Hardy, D.D. 

Jehovah-Jesus. 

By Rev. Thomas Whitelaw, D.D. 

The Sevenfold I Am. 

By Rev. Thomas Marjoribanks, B.D. 

The Man Among the Myrtles. 
By the Editor. 

The Story of Joseph. 

By Rev. Adam C. Welch, B.D., Th.D. 

The Divine Drama of Job. 

By Rev. Charles F. Aked, D.D. 

A Mirror of the Soul: Studies in the Psalter. 
By Rev. Canon Vaughan, M.A. 

In the Upper Room. 

By Rev. D. J. Burrill, D.D., LL.D. 



Price 6o cents net per Volume 



gbe Sbott Courge Series 

EDITED BY 

Rev. JOHN ADAMS, B.D. 



THE 
STORY OF JOSEPH 



BY 

ADAM C. WELCH, D.D. 

PROFESSOR OF HEBREW AND OLD TESTAMENT EXEGESIS 

NEW COLLEGE, EDINBURGH 

AUTHOR OF 

"the religion OF ISRAEL UNDER THE KINGDOM* AND 

"aNSBLM AND HIS WORK" (tHB WORLD's BFOCH-MAKERS) 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1913 



TO 

THE CONGREGATION 

OF 

CLAREMONT, GLASGOW 

IN MEMORY OF ELEVEN YEARS 
OF MUTUAL SERVICE 



6 

Copy. 






CONTENTS 



I. Joseph and his Brethren 
II. Joseph the Slave . 

III. Joseph and the Chief Butler 

IV. Jacob . 

V. Joseph's Success 
VI. The Brethren in the Famine 
VII. The Reconciliation 
VIII. The End: Joseph and Jacob 

Appendix 

Index of Subjects . 



I 

17 
35 
49 
67 
11 
95 
107 

123 
125 



Vll 



**FOR, as the highest gospel was a Biography, so is the 
life of every good man still an indubitable gospel, and 
preaches to the eye and heart and whole man, so that 
devils even must believe and tremble, these gladdest 
tidings. Man is heaven-born — not the thrall of circum- 
stances, of necessity, but the victorious subduer thereof.'* 

Carlyle. 

'* O MY friend, cultivate the filial feelings ! and let no 
man think himself released from the kind charities of 
relationship : these shall give him peace at the last ; 
these are the best foundations for every species of 
benevolence. I rejoice to hear that you are reconciled 
with all your relations." 

Lamb, Letter to Coleridge. 



JOSEPH AND HIS BRETHREN 



I 

JOSEPH AND HIS BRETHREN 

The story of Joseph is one of the best 
written sections in the Pentateuch, and most 
men have delighted in it as children. Its 
obvious charm lies in its rapid change of 
surroundings, its rush of incident, its vivid 
portrayal of character, its power to show 
men through what they do and say. But 
later than childhood men learn to acknowledge 
its singular power. On the surface it is a 
charming rendering of the tale of the younger 
brother who is driven from home by the 
jealousy of his elders, but who makes for 
himself and his whole nation a new home 
and security. It pictures this in a country 
where strong passions are at home, where 
men drink when they are thirsty and stab 
when ,they are angry. Yet throughout it, 

3 



The Story of Joseph 

not obtruded and never forgotten, runs the 
larger purpose. It appears much as it 
appears in human life, not thrusting itself on 
the attention, but quietly offering itself to 
the observant heart. Because of its presence, 
what might otherwise appear trivial becomes 
significant, what might be interesting becomes 
negligible. It forms the thread, on which 
the incidents are strung. 

I. The Larger Purpose. 

The larger purpose is the way in which a 
people came to be, and to be conscious of 
itself as possessing a peculiar heritage. 
Hitherto Scripture has told about men and 
their fortunes, about Abraham and Isaac and 
Jacob, and how they lived in Palestine. Now, 
one begins to feel the wider horizons, and to 
foresee the larger movements of Sinai and the 
conquest. Soon the story will deal with a 
law which is to govern a nation, and with a 
nation which is set in a country of its own 
and which has its own institutions. Soon 
the great figures will stand out leading the 
tramp of a people. But before that comes 

4 



Joseph and His Brethren 

into view, the story tells of the common 
ideals which made Israel a nation at all. It 
relates how they went down into Egypt ; but 
what interests the historian is how they were 
capable of remaining themselves there, and 
why they were capable of following any one 
who would lead them out again to a country, 
where they could be free to develop their 
peculiar culture and their distinctive faith. 
They went into Egypt, but Egypt could 
not keep them, for Egypt could not as- 
similate them and could not content them. 
They remained Israelites under that alien 
sky and in that strange land, waiting till 
God gave them a land in which they could 
be altogether themselves. Famine drove them 
down, and the land of the Nile fed them and 
gave them hospitable shelter ; but they had 
another famine which Egypt could not satisfy. 
So they remained Israel, aliens in a strange 
though hospitable land. 

They were Israel, because of what God had 
been to their fathers. He had given them 
something which marked them off as His own. 
The historian believed that God had given them 

5 



The Story of Joseph 

that distinctive character in order to make 
the record of the nation of Israel the story of 
God's widening purpose of redemption. To 
remain true to the best of all their past was 
a greater thing than the ordinary patriotic 
duty of loyalty to national traditions, it was 
to remain true to God and to His will with 
and for them. So he told the story of 
Joseph and his brethren, not merely because 
it was a charming story in itself, nor because 
it had gathered round the names of some of 
Israel's forefathers, but because it could make 
clear how God had a purpose for mankind 
through this little people, and how it was the 
character which came from serving that pur- 
pose that preserved them from extinction. 
They went down into Egypt, but they could 
not remain there, and their unwillingness to 
remain was due in part to the fact that God 
summoned them out, in part it was due to 
the fact that they were able to hear His 
summons. A later historian was to tell how 
God gave them a law and a leader : this 
historian tells how there was given them 
the temper which submits to a law and 

6 



Joseph and His Brethren 

accepts a leaden A law and a leader are so 
useless without a prepared people. 

To-day we read this account of the begin- 
ning of the national life out of the Bible, and 
the Bible is to us something quite apart from 
all other writings, alike in its origin and in 
its outlook. What it writes about is sacred 
history, and that is thought of as wholly dis- 
tinct in character from any other kind of 
history. There is a certain gain in recog- 
nising that, when this story was written, it 
took up the tales which were told in Israel 
about their national past and wove them to- 
gether into the unity which we have. It is 
possible here and there to detect how the 
writer has owed his material to different 
sources. He took the stories which men 
related about the deeds of their great men, 
and he showed their ideal elements and their 
higher side. Probably his account in its 
new shape became the source from which the 
maidens and young men of Israel learned all 
that they knew of their great national past. I 

They read in this story of how Israel began, ^ 

and, even as they read, they learned uncon- 

7 



The Story of Joseph 

sciously how without its faith Israel would 
never have begun and could never have 
continued. They could not think about the 
great past of the nation without thinking of 
the faith which had made it great. They 
could not read about the heroes who had 
built up Israel without learning what were 
the qualities which had made them fit to 
lead Israel. And, as they found how faith 
in God kept their people through some of 
its hardest experiences, they looked for more 
from Him. 

2. The Quarrel. 

There are many dark and dreadful things 
in human nature, but the darkest and the 
most dreadful is envy ; and what makes 
envy so dark and so dreadful is that it is in 
human nature. It is not the vice of a few 
men, it is the vice of all men. 

It leads to ugly results, such as the crime 
of which the ten brethren made themselves 
guilty, when they caught their younger 
brother and having lowered him into a 
cistern, went away for their dinner as 

8 



Joseph and His Brethren 

though nothing had happened. They could 
not bear the idea that he might some day 
prove himself fit to be the chief over them. 
His dream and his naive report of the dream 
were not the cause of their conduct to him. 
No man ever comes to be the chief over 
his brethren, because he has had a dream 
in which he saw the other sheaves bowing 
down to his sheaf ; nor were they so childish 
as to believe it. A man comes to be chief, 
because he is better fitted to control and 
guide the destinies of the family. The 
brethren sold Joseph into Egypt, not because 
he had had some boyish dreams which with 
a youth's self-conceit he had told abroad, 
but because they were anxious to get rid of 
the sight of his intolerable capacity. Envy 
hates capacity, because it sees in such a 
quality nothing except the certainty of being 
put into the shade by it. And at the 
prompting of envy all ties of kindly 
humanity and brotherhood are forgotten. 

The ugliest result of the vice, however, 
is its unseen effect. It darkens the whole 
house of life to the men who cherish it. 



The Story of Joseph 

Let a man once admit it into his heart and 
keep it there, and it will banish all sweet 
wholesomeness from his nature and make 
much good impossible to him. Love and 
pity become alien to his soul, contentment 
with his own lot and a just pride in his own 
work disappear from his thoughts, justice 
begins to be twisted in its meaning, and all 
fair dealing grows difficult towards the man 
who is envied. When these things and 
such as these are occupying the house of 
life, God has not much place there, nor have 
his fellow-men a great consideration. 

The brethren were men, when they did 
this thing, for envy is the peculiar vice of 
our prime. While boys are still at school, 
they are comparatively free from it. They 
can be proud then of the lad who makes the 
school team count for something, though 
his prowess at games puts the others into 
the shade. They can be gratified at the 
glory which comes to the school through 
sending out a fine scholar, though he left 
the others nothing except second prizes. 
They are greatly pleased to be seen in their 

lO 



Joseph and His Brethren 

hero's society. But when a man steps out 
beyond his contemporaries, he has to find 
out sadly enough that he rarely stands on the 
old footing with them. Let a man outstrip 
in the race those who began life with him, 
let him have a larger house or a little more 
success, and they do not meet him with 
the old ease of manner. They say that they 
are waiting to see whether he has not 
changed in his attitude to them, or will show 
himself the same as he once was. And even 
while they say such a thing to themselves, 
they betray how they expect to find him 
diflFerent, and so help to make him different. 
It makes no real difference whether 
another man's promotion is at the cost of 
others : it does not even matter, though 
through his success he may have become 
better able to give help and encouragement. 
In every case men do well to be on their 
guard against the dreadful power of envy. 
There is no reason for it ; there is no reason 
in it. It is both the basest and the most 
unreasonable passion which torments the 
lives of men, but that does not make it any 

II 



The Story of Joseph 

less universal. It Is the vice which makes 
one most sure that there is a radical twist in 
the soul of man. 

The other vices can offer plausible reasons 
for coming to haunt the spirit and turn it 
from its high way. The sins of the flesh 
can offer some excuse for turning men to 
pursue base ends. In many such cases the 
devil can come and does come, robed as an 
angel of light, promising a great deal and 
really having something to give. But envy 
is a sin of the soul, which offers nothing, 
no personal advantage, no help, no promise. 
It relies on its own naked power, and it 
needs no more. 

It creeps into many places. Men band 
themselves together for a good cause ; and 
cnvjy which broke up this family and set the 
ten brothers against the one, will break up 
a goodly company of apostles. It is often 
wise that a man should remind himself how 
every power, which his fellow-worker is 
developing in connection with a cause, in 
which both of them believe, is being used to 
further the cause they love and is a means 

12 



Joseph and His Brethren 

to its swifter victory. He does well to re- 
mind himself, since otherwise he might find 
himself envious of a power for good which 
has been denied to himself. There are few 
things darker than the intrigues and jeal- 
ousies which spring up inside the fellow- 
ship of those who have banded themselves 
together to help forward the world. 

The ten brothers envied Joseph, and 
being primitive men, they dropped him into 
a cistern, and afterwards, when the oppor- 
tunity was offered, sold him into slavery. 
If they had been more civilised, they would 
have found some more delicate means of 
effecting their end. But one thing which 
Scripture does is to take the naked and 
primitive vices, and show these bringing 
about results which modern conditions of 
life make impossible. It suggests how, if 
the man be left unchanged, his means may 
alter, but his aims will remain the same. 
Envy makes men want to prove themselves 
superior to the envied man, though it were 
only after the clumsy fashion of the 
bludgeon. 

13 



The Story of Joseph 

There Scripture leaves the ten brothers 
for a time, and turns to follow the fate of 
Joseph. It does that, not merely because 
the story begins to reveal wider horizons 
and to deal with the future of the race, nor 
merely because Joseph, through his contact 
with Egypt, has a large and fruitful future 
both for himself and for his people. It does 
this, because there is a good reason why 
Joseph has a large and fruitful future. He 
is a wholesome man. The ten brothers 
have suffered the rank weed of ^nvy to 
govern and possess their souls : out of 
natures, which are so possessed, no large 
or wholesome thing can spring. It is only 
possible to win a generous and gracious 
future out of something which in itself is 
more clean and rich. What the ten men 
need, in order to make Israel a name by 
which the world shall bless, is more than 
the land of Palestine or a supply of corn 
for the time of drought ; it is a new spirit, 
which shall weld them together, not in a 
mutual conspiracy, but in a brotherhood. 
Had they been made sure of Palestine in 

14 



Joseph and His Brethren 

their present temper and preserved from the 
coming famine, they would only have given 
the world what it has already. The narrator 
follows Joseph into Egypt, because from 
there he brought back or sent back more 
than corn. He asserted there the faith, 
which knows what to do with corn, and the 
brotherhood, which can master envy and 
revenge. He gave the spirit which could 
make Israel a nation and a blessing to the 
world in which God made its work possible. 



^5 



II 

JOSEPH THE SLAVE 



II 

JOSEPH THE SLAVE 

It was as hard a test of worth as any to 
which a man has ever been exposed, Joseph 
had, no doubt, been a little difficult to live 
with, and not always wise. He may have 
been somewhat arrogant in relating his 
dreams, and ill-advised when he carried tales 
about his brethren to the old father. But 
the situation was one of extraordinary 
difficulty. The lad was of a higher type 
than his brethren, with a richer nature and 
a sweeter strain in him. He heard things 
spoken of and saw deeds done which were 
hidden from the eyes of Jacob. And the 
sins of his brethren were not the trifling 
peccadilloes of childhood about which all 
boys feel a fierce resentment, when one of 
their number carries the account to the 

19 



The Story of Joseph 

authorities. The men were men : their sins 
were the coarse, far-reaching crimes of men. 
They were capable of dropping their brother 
into a cistern, and taking their dinner with- 
out allowing themselves to be disturbed by 
his cries. These and such as these were 
the rude surroundings in which Joseph's life 
as a youth was spent. To any youth of 
finer moral feeling and surer spiritual insight, 
it must have been a sore burden to see his 
father's house lapsing back into the barbarism 
from which it had promised for a time to 
rise. And, even if he did not realise the 
scope of their failure, there was the in- 
stinctive revolt of sweet cleanness against 
a moral disorder. The only one who could 
understand was the old father, whose sons 
had grown beyond him. To him the lad 
went with his spiritual distress and in his im- 
potence. His complaint was more than tale- 
bearing : it was the means to lighten his heart. 

I. His Natural Superiority. 

Joseph's dreams were controlled in some 
measure by the same element in him. No 

20 



Joseph the Slave 

doubt they were in part prompted by the 
unwise favouritism of the father, who gave 
his beloved son the sleeved coat of a ruler 
without teaching him the self-restraint by 
which alone he could become capable of 
rule. But the dreams were also the forecast 
of his innate capacity. He had something 
in him which could make him stand alone 
and which should compel men to do him 
homage. The future for the race lay, not 
in the coarser powers of the brothers, but 
in the powers by which Joseph was superior 
to them, and of which he could not remain 
wholly unconscious in himself. He had 
hold of something which they did not yet 
acknowledge. To him life had richer issues 
and a higher aim : and the future and the 
power to control the future were there. 
Because he held this loftier faith, he was 
already the superior of his brethren ; and 
the days to come must only make more 
undeniable his superiority. 

There must always be, especially in the 
beginning, a touch of arrogance in any man 
who knows that he has something to say 

21 



The Story of Joseph 

or do, which other men will be compelled 
to acknowledge. The Christian man, who 
believes he has attained to what other men 
are seeking, often has the appearance of 
being a superior person. He knows he is 
not merely groping after life's secret, but 
that through God's mercy he has reached it. 
He is not simply a seeker, but he has found 
the end of life. He has the victory. Small 
wonder that, especially at first, he irritates 
so many of those with whom he comes in 
contact. It is true that the sense of how 
everything he has is his through the divine 
grace, the further sense of how all he holds 
he holds for the good of men, will make 
his judgment more gentle and take the edge 
off his superiority. Yet the spiritual man 
judgeth all, while he himself is judged of 
none. The man who knows the highest 
end of life and the secret of its attainment 
will have to utter them. Though he should 
restrain his speech and bear no public 
testimony, the fact that he severs himself 
from other men's pursuits and cannot share 
in some of their interests, is his most 

22 



Joseph the Slave 

eloquent testimony. He does not need to 
say how deeply he differs, when once he 
has quietly ceased to share the common 
interests and hopes. The measure, too, of 
his faith in the truth of the ends he seeks, 
is the measure of his confidence that ulti- 
mately they are going to win. The others 
will need, sooner or later, to come bowing 
to what he knows to be true. The men 
who hold his faith have the future and the 
control of it. He must believe that too, 
if he believes in his faith at all. He may 
not utter it with the naivete of Joseph, but 
he cannot help believing it : and, since he 
believes it, somehow or other it will control 
his conduct and betray itself in the things 
he does. 

There is no clash in life like the clash of 
two opposing ideals, two opposite ends for 
life itself. There is no difficulty in the 
home or the State like the difficulty of 
determining how men, who hold opposite 
views of the ends for which life is lived at 
all, can still succeed in living and working 
together. We have heard much of the 

o 

23 



The Story of Joseph 

intolerance of Churchmen and their crude 
methods of silencing opposition. Perhaps 
we shall hear more in these later days of 
the intolerance of irreligious men. The 
cistern, into which the brethren dropped 
Joseph, was a clumsy way of escaping from 
a life which made the others uneasy. And 
the irritation which the pagan showed to the 
early Christians, the irritation which the 
Cavalier felt in the presence of the Puritan, 
the intolerance of the artistic and literary 
world for the evangelical, are the reminder 
of how easily the cistern could be reopened. 

Without doubt, Joseph was unwise in the 
way in which he expressed his thoughts. 
He was face to face with one of the most 
difficult practical questions which are ever 
set to men to answer : and he was still 
young. How, without seeming a very 
superior person, to say something that bears 
on the intimate conduct of life and that 
one cannot neglect without disloyalty, and 
especially how to say it to men who are 
older than oneself, when to be silent and 
when to speak, how to express one's con- 

24 



Joseph the Slave 

victions so as to make them most eiFective — 
these are matters which are not discovered 
in a day. Joseph, no doubt, needed the 
discipline of living in a large family. A 
lad, who can live among ten brothers in the 
same house and about the same work and 
who can grow up either a braggart or a 
superior person, must be singularly incapable 
of learning from the discipline to which they 
are likely to submit him. But not this kind 
of discipline ! His old father rebuked his 
favourite son for the vanity which pierced 
through his expression of his convictions ; 
but he pondered the saying, for he was wise 
enough to recognise that his son might be 
right. The ten flung him into the cistern 
and sold him to the Midianites. Joseph 
had to begin life all anew, a slave in 
Potiphar's house, and a slave who was there, 
because his brothers had sold him. 

2. His Bearing under Trial. 

Yet nothing seemed able to spoil a fun- 
damentally sweet and wholesome nature. 
He was already too big and real a man, 

25 



The Story of Joseph 

liv^ing too close to the things which matter, 
to be determined by circumstances. Suppose 
Joseph had been merely a proud, hard spirit. 
He would have brooded over the wrong 
which he had received, and allowed the 
outrage from his brothers to master him. 
He would have allowed it to darken his 
temper, and shut out the appeal of the 
living world which was still all round him 
and in which it was still possible for him 
to find a place. Men are often tempted 
to retort on the world with the weapons 
which they believe it has used toward them. 
They count it a fine thing to meet coldness 
with coldness, injustice with injustice. It 
is not a fine thing at all, for it is an ac- 
knowledgment of defeat. So to do is to 
suffer oneself to be beaten by circumstances 
at the very outset : it is to surrender one's 
soul to be controlled by the accidents of life, 
instead of keeping its control in one's own 
hands. And out of it can come nothing 
except the perpetuation of weakness and 
distrust and wrong. 

Suppose, again, he had been an easily 
26 



Joseph the Slave 

cowed, really mean spirit with no inward re- 
sources. It would at once have seemed sure 
to him that, because his brothers had lost 
their tempers with him and treated him 
vilely, therefore the world was all vile, and 
life was nothing except a game of chance. 
And for all the wholesome uses of life he 
would have been a soured and spoiled man. 
He would have said the customary bitter 
things against human nature and human life. 
And so, even if he had put his hand to his 
work and done it, he would have done it, 
merely because he must, without zest in it, 
without the desire of helping any other 
human spirit thereby, Hope and spring 
would have gone out of his life ; and, for 
all the real uses of this world, he would have 
been a spoiled man. 

With a cheerful and indomitable heart, 
Joseph frankly took up the life which was 
left him. It was novel : it was humiliating : 
it promised little. But he took it as he 
found it, and he put the best of which he 
was capable into it. He was in prison, and 
he was a slave ; but he had a place, such as 

27 



The Story of Joseph 

it was. He laid hold of Potiphar's work, 
and he did it with zest. 

He was an innocent man, foully wronged. 
But, instead of turning his thoughts to the 
fact of his innocence in order to think how 
badly he had been treated, and so making 
his very innocence into a means of embitter- 
ing his life and souring himself against life, 
he kept it as a means of communing with all 
high and sacred thoughts. He found his 
way right out beyond the condition in which 
he was set to the source and spring of all 
clean and honest thought and living. He 
found in it an impulse for more active and 
zealous service. 

The Lord was with him. How could it 
be otherwise ? The Lord is with all men : 
" whither shall I flee from Thy presence," or 
how may any man be where God is not? 
But men so often shut the door to God's 
mercy, and make their lives impenetrable to 
His presence. And he who does it most 
constantly and most effectually is the man 
with a grievance against life. A man with 
a grievance is one of the most difficult things 

28 



Joseph the Slave 

to reach at all. He cannot be got at. He 
has shut himself up from his fellow-men, 
and he would fain shut himself up from 
God. 

The suffering of a good man is often a 
hard question to those who look at it from 
the outside ; but it is as often no grievous 
thing to him who is passing through it. 
The suffering touches their outward life, but 
within the Lord is with them, and is realised 
the more, because they are more dependent 
on Him than they once were. They need 
Him more, and ask for more ; and he who 
seeketh findeth. As the Lord was with him, 
Joseph came to believe that his God cared 
for him and for all through which he was 
required to pass, cared that he should do 
manfully what was still within his reach, 
cared that he should remain wholesome and 
sweet-natured in slavery. 

So he kept more than his personal zest in 
life, he kept also his sympathy with other 
men. He had a heart at leisure from itself 
to see that the two men, who were flung into 
the prison beside him, were helpless and 

29 



The Story of Joseph 

frightened men. He went out of his way 
to comfort and help them. Men had not 
proved themselves very generous to him, but 
that was evidently no reason why he should 
be indifferent to them. He made it his busi- 
ness — for, unless he had made it so, it really 
was none of his business what became of the 
chief baker and head butler — he made it his 
business to see whether he could help them 
over this hard time in their lives. He 
listened to their troubles, as though he never 
had had any of his own. 

3. His Reward. 

By so doing, it may be thought that 
Joseph only took fresh troubles on himself. 
That were a great mistake. His act helped 
him as much at least as it helped them. It 
kept him from the sour brooding over his 
condition and his wrongs, it lifted him into 
the glad sense of usefulness, it brought 
nim away to the recognition of how much 
still lay within his power. The quality of 
self-forgetfulness, like that of mercy, is twice 
blessed ; and the blessing which it brings on 

30 



Joseph the Slave 

him who forgets himself is at least as great 
as any which he confers. 

And so his master trusted him. That 
was an inevitable result A man of such a 
nature wins other men's trust and is fit to 
appreciate the incalculable prize he has won. 
There is an imperishable charm about a will- 
ing service, which is not nicely reckoned 
according to immediate reward. And the 
reward, which is implied in such trust, makes 
the heart of its receiver larger and his 
nature richer. The fact that his master 
trusted him^ a slave, not even born in his 
house, but bought in the public market, 
came back to stay Joseph's heart in the hour 
of his temptation. For, when his master's 
wife tempted him, he reminded her with 
grave sweet dignity of the trust which had 
been put in him by his master. All that he 
hath is under my hand, except you, his wife. 
Slave as he was, with no rights in the house, 
and therefore, as men glibly conclude, with 
no duties, he remembered how Potiphar had 
honoured him with his faith. 

On that temptation, which has come to be 

31 



The Story of Joseph 

associated with his name, it is needless to 
dwell long, for the simple reason that, as 
most men come to learn, it is the character- 
istic of the vice that even to think about its 
danger and ugliness can do harm. There is 
probably no side of human life on which it is 
so true that the way of escape does not come 
through thinking how noxious it is, but 
comes through thinking of things that are 
pure and honourable and of good report. 
Yet, when the Jewish historian speaks of it 
as befalling Joseph, he recognises frankly 
how in one form or another every man in 
this world and probably most women must 
meet it. 

What is noteworthy is first the way in 
which Joseph met it. He speaks of it as 
treachery to his master who trusted him, and 
to his God who trusted him more. As she 
listened, the woman might have heard in his 
words the reminder of how her husband 
trusted her with more than he ever com- 
mitted to his slave. He trusted her with his 
good name and with his honour, and she is 
ready to trail both in the mud at the bidding 
32 



Joseph the Slave 

of her passions. It is the selfishness of all 
such vice, with its power to break up mankind 
into greedy atoms, which seek nothing and 
see nothing but their own pleasure, called 
sometimes their own self-development, that 
makes its bane. It saps honour, loyalty 
and truth. And, when all the glozing 
words have been uttered to make the vice 
in all its forms less foul, that remains 
true. 

The other noteworthy fact in Joseph's 
attitude is his silence before the accusation. 
He denied his own guilt, but he made no 
counter-charge, and he went back to his 
prison with his lips sealed. It maybe that 
he felt how his master was one of the few 
men who had treated him with justice. 
Potiphar took him to be a slave and pro- 
moted him to honour in his household ; and 
the memory of what the man had done may 
have kept Joseph silent, when he had the power 
to sow suspicion of the wife in the mind of 
his master. Joseph's continence is high, 
but this mercy and loyalty to the bread he 
has eaten are higher still. For what adds to 

33 



The Story of Joseph 

its greatness is that there was only one man 
in Egypt whose good opinion Joseph had 
reason to prize. And he had to forego that 
and suffer under the suspicion that he had 
been a lecherous traitor. 



34 



Ill 

JOSEPH AND THE CHIEF BUTLER 



Ill 

JOSEPH AND THE CHIEF 
BUTLER 

The plot of Joseph's life as a slave moves 
largely along the line of what he had to bear 
from other men and of how he faced it. 
The writer does not describe his hero's 
feelings, nor does he dwell on the painful 
conditions of the prison or the slave-yard. 
He brings Joseph into contact with different 
women and men who deal, according to their 
different natures, with the slave-boy, and then, 
often leaving the reader to supply the motives, 
always leaving him to supply the attendant 
emotions, he tells simply how Joseph acted. 

I. The Sin of Ingratitude. 

The chief butler, who had promised to 
befriend his benefactor, had no sooner escaped 

37 



The Story of Joseph 

from the fear of death than he forgot all 
about him. Ingratitude is a bitter thing to 
meet for the first time. It is true that 
Joseph had not freed the butler, but had 
merely interpreted the man's dream. It was 
Pharaoh who had freed him. But Joseph 
had given him heart and hope when the 
man was discovering how lonely a favoured 
courtier can be in his day of adversity. 
And, when his day of prosperity returned, he 
forgot his solitary friend. That was in its 
own degree somewhat harder to bear than 
any of Joseph's previous trials, because the 
butler owed him something. When his 
brothers had resented his claim of superiority 
over them, a man with some humour might 
recognise that the situation was difficult. 
Potiphar's wife had proved that " hell hath 
no fury like a woman scorned," and might 
imagine that she had some reason for resent- 
ment against the indifferent foreigner, whom 
she had so greatly honoured with her regard. 
But this man had talked largely of gratitude, 
had volunteered a promise of help and had 
forgotten. 

38 



Joseph and the Chief Butler 

Perhaps there was a certain advantage to 
Joseph's character in the fact that he did not 
succeed at once through the good offices of 
the chief butler. He had tried for the first 
time his power of the interpretation of 
dreams, and had carefully said that, in doing 
it, he was but the intermediary between God 
and man, for "the interpretation belongeth 
to God." If his first work of the kind had 
brought him to signal honour, it might have 
made him forget that fact. A man who 
discovers his power as a preacher runs a 
great risk. He believes that he is no more 
than the spokesman of a higher truth which 
is entrusted to him. But he finds that he 
can interest men a good deal and even move 
them a little ; he finds success. Then comes 
the risk that he should aim at the success, 
and for its sake palter a little with his convic- 
tions. He can make the truth more telling 
by heightening the colours here and by 
toning them down there. When men win 
success soon, they believe that they have got 
it, instead of the work which they have done 
having deserved it. They think less of 

39 



The Story of Joseph 

the worth of the work and more of them- 
selves. 

It was a steadying thing for Joseph to be 
left in prison. That is not said by way of 
excuse for the butler. Nothing can excuse 
him. God can use even the wrath of man 
as a means of discipline for other men's 
souls, but He does not thereby make man's 
wrath a holy thing. 

2. The Deepening of Joseph's 

Character. 

But Joseph heard of the chief butler's 
elevation : he saw his own interpretation of 
the dream come true : he saw what he had 
done in the matter passed by. He was left 
to the weary routine of policing the prisoners, 
as though he had never interpreted a dream 
in his life. And it flung him back on the 
recognition of the power which was in him, 
as something which was not given for his 
own advancement but for God's ends. It 
made him think of it anew as a strange dowry 
from Heaven, whatever might be its outcome 
for himself. He was left to realise the 

40 



Joseph and the Chief Butler 

sustaining idea that he was serving a higher 
purpose and a divine will. He was com- 
pelled to recognise how that was something 
which no man could take away from him, 
and which depended on no man's recognition. 
He learned that he could do without the 
outward recognition, and keep the strong 
sense that he was an instrument in God's 
hands for a wondrous end. 

That calm sense awes and steadies a man, 
lending him character and dignity. And 
so, when Pharaoh, having dreamed a dream 
which none of his court interpreters can 
expound, learns that there is a gifted lad in 
the slave-yard of Potiphar and sends for him, 
Joseph bears himself like no slave, but as 
God's freeman. He stands before Pharaoh 
as one who knows how beyond Pharaoh is 
God, and who knows also that a man who 
has tried to realise all that is implied in 
being God's instrument, has no occasion to 
vex himself overmuch about his treatment in 
the court of kings. 

At that time the reading of dreams was 
a business which men could learn as they 

41 



The Story of Joseph 

learned any other business, and to which 
they applied complicated rules. Pharaoh 
had his professional seers who combined 
with their other work the special task of 
reading dreams, and who qualified themselves 
for it. When Joseph came before them 
with the record of a successful interpretation 
of the butler's dream, it was natural that they 
should see in him only a cleverer man than 
themselves, who had sources of information 
that were hidden from them. Evidently 
Joseph shared their opinion as to the power 
to read dreams, and probably he believed 
that they had that power. He did not differ 
from the common opinions of the time in 
which he lived ; he merely believed that his 
God could reveal Himself and His will 
through that means. But he referred all his 
power to God. As he had insisted to the 
butler, so he insisted to Pharaoh, that the 
interpretation was from the Almighty, and 
that he was no more than the instrument in 
God's hands. And he bore himself as one 
who was no more, yet who was that. Is not 
this the attitude which a man, no matter what 

42 



Joseph and the Chief Butler 

may be his view as to the method by which 
God reveals His will to men, ought to 
take in the matter? Through taking it he 
is on the way to learn a worthier thought 
of the means by which God comes to 
men. 

It is remarkable to recognise that these 
were the stories about their heroes which 
young Jews learned as children, and which 
sank down into their very constitution and 
make of mind. Here was the ideal which 
the Jewish faith set up for men. This fine 
courage and indomitable pluck, this holding 
on to manly honour in spite of all opposition 
and temptation, this power of self-control in 
not suffering other men's ingratitude and 
inhumanity to sour the wholesome soul, this 
gracious, humane compassion which went on 
doing helpful things for other men, and 
above all this deep well of principle and 
faith in God feeding the inward life and 
flowing out in the quiet power to conquer 
circumstance — these were the high qualities 
which they associated with the men who had 
made Israel. Israel endured and remained 

43 



The Story of Joseph 

Israel, so long as it could breed men of such 
a temper. 

When one has thought of all this, it is 
not difficult to understand why the narrator 
left the brothers to follow Joseph into 
Egypt. They went back to their father, 
with their younger brother's coat dabbled 
in blood and a glib lie on their lips. He 
went down into Egypt, disinherited and a 
slave. But the future of Israel and its 
religion went with him. He would some 
day provide them all with a home and 
sufficient food in the famine ; but that was 
the least part of his gift. He and he alone 
could provide them with any vision of hope 
and duty, with any knowledge of God and 
truth. There was nothing for the world 
which could come out of the ten, as they 
then were. Everything could come out of 
the one man who, disinherited, lonely, poor, 
a slave, held fast by his integrity, because 
he held fast by his God. The hope of the 
world was there. 



44 



Joseph and the Chief Butler 

3. The Incalculable Element in 
Religion. 

Joseph is an incalculable and invincible 
force, because he is a religious man. A 
religious man is always one about whom it 
is impossible at any time to say how far 
he will go and how much he will bear. A 
man who holds by this world, who is 
governed by its sanctions and upheld by 
its support, is a calculable force. It is 
possible to reckon how much he will bear 
and where he will break down. He lives 
by what all men may see, and his power 
is according to the pressure which circum- 
stances put upon him. But a man who 
has his reserve forces in the things which 
are not of this world, is apt to rise above 
circumstances and to mould life to serve an 
end which life itself does not supply and 
cannot control. 

Israel was to go down into Egypt and 
become subject to conditions which it would 
never have chosen and could not control. 
The untoward circumstances, first of sur- 

45 



The Story of Joseph 

rounding heathenism, afterwards of bondage, 
were God's will for them : and they were 
to submit and to learn how to live above 
them. If they had faith, the bondage could 
become a new thing. It was not merely 
tolerable, because they were able to live 
beyond it ; it had a meaning and a promise. 
Men could expect something out of this 
bitter experience. Gibbon says somewhere 
that all which religious men seem to need, 
in order to explain the difficulties of God's 
moral government of the world, is to call 
the afflictions of one set of men divine 
chastisements on the wicked, the troubles of 
another set of men the trials and discipline 
of their faith. The historian implied the 
sneering suggestion of how men in religious 
matters often play with words. Perhaps, as 
he wrote, he underrated the power of the 
human soul to transcend untoward outward 
conditions. What men call things deter- 
mines and reveals what they think about 
them. What men think about them deter- 
mines as surely the attitude which they 
adopt toward such things, and the influence 

46 



Joseph and the Chief Butler 

which they permit these to have over their 
life. And that really determines everything, 
for it decides what men become through 
their surroundings. 

Because Joseph believed that in what 
seemed to wreck his life God would uphold 
him, because he could lift up his heart to 
Him who is over all, the outcome of his 
captivity was not to crush him, but to make 
him more independent on outward events, 
more dependent on spiritual powers. There- 
fore he gave his people more than corn and 
a shelter. He gave his people a new 
spiritual uplift. 



47 



IV 
JACOB 



IV 

JACOB 

Nowhere is the art of the narrator more 
clearly shown than in his picture of Jacob's 
old age. He pervades the story, although 
he appears so little in direct evidence. 
Wherever he does appear, his acts and his 
speech are so simply in keeping with his 
situation as an old man, and, it may be 
added, with what he has been. He has 
largely fulfilled his part, a part filled with 
strenuous and varied activity, and now he 
begins to fade into the background of the 
piece. When he does emerge, it is not to 
take prominent action any more. Other 
figures occupy the active and eager fore- 
ground, while he stands back as part of 
the surroundings. Yet always one is com- 
pelled to feel behind the strenuous figures 

51 



The Story of Joseph 

that fill the foreground the greatness of him 
who stands behind. He is never negligible, 
never less than himself. Jacob's active life 
is past, but his influence is not, his real 
power is not. He does not thrust himself 
forward, but he is always referred to and 
consulted. He is recognised as forming the 
final court of appeal. His word carries 
weight, though the arm which once rolled 
the stone from the well mouth is paralysed. 
It is a gracious picture of what old age 
might be, equally honourable to both sides. 
He is not meddlesome, but commands de- 
ference by the width of his experience and 
the weight of his character. 

!• A Link in the Chain. 

"Jacob dwelt in the land of his fathers' 
sojournings : now these are the generations 
of Jacob." Behind him lies a great and 
gallant history, and now the history is 
sweeping out past him to larger horizons. 
Those for whom he has made life free and 
possible are being called to play their part. 
Before he goes, he has time given him to 

52 



Jacob 

feel, not merely to think with his head but 
to feel with his heart, how he is but a 
passing incident, a link between the genera- 
tions. Behind him are Abraham and Isaac, 
before him are the generations of Jacob. 
He is the bearer of the tradition which shall 
bind these generations together. 

He watches the hot and eager youths 
break out into the untried fields of life. 
To them it is all so new, and so much is 
to be won there by the strength of their 
own right arms. But he knows, with the 
patient wisdom of age, that the thing which 
has been is that which shall be. Only he 
does not thrust his wisdom on his sons or 
on anybody. When, however, they are 
baffled by the new experience of famine, 
terrified by the novel thing which they have 
never seen before, bewildered by something 
in which their strength is useless, they come 
back to the old man in the tent. And he 
jibes lightly at them. Things will never 
come right through your sitting down to 
look at one another. Egypt used to be 
Abraham's granary. Go down and buy corn 

53 



The Story of Joseph 

there ; and go now, or you may grow too 
weak to go at all. 

He has learned not only the practical 
wisdom which knows the value of prompt 
action. He has learned to consider what 
seem trifles and to ponder what to others 
are negligible facts. When Joseph tells his 
ambitious dream, the account makes his 
father thoughtful. He sees, perhaps, how 
his own trifling gift of the sleeved coat has 
stirred the ambition of Joseph, and how the 
young man's mind has begun to awake to 
its native power. Jacob remembers a day 
when Rebecca, being ambitious for her son, 
put a savoury mess of kid's flesh into his 
hands and bade him carry it into Isaac's tent. 
He recognises how out of so trifling an 
event has come all this life which he and his 
sons now share. The brethren see in the 
dream the conceited fancy of a spoiled boy ; 
and they grow hot and angry in the desire to 
snub the dreamer. Jacob sees the awaking 
of the sense of power, the kindling of self- 
confidence in a man. He ponders it, because 
it is big with great issues. 

54 



Jacob 

The sons have the privilege of youth, its 
privilege of seeing little and having few 
hesitations. Hence they take swift action, 
so soon as Joseph annoys them. But Jacob 
knows how much has gone to make them, 
how it is the land of his fathers' sojournings 
in which they live. Their work is all con- 
ditioned by a past which they have been too 
impatient to recognise, and into the spirit of 
which they have never thought it necessary 
to enter. Their life has been made possible 
and is being moulded by factors and elements 
of which they never dream. Jacob is the 
bearer of a mighty tradition : and the ten 
sons have not had the wisdom to serve 
themselves heirs to its meaning. Joseph is 
nearer it than they. He has something of 
the spiritual temper, the moral alertness 
which made Abraham arise to find a land 
where he might serve God, and which guided 
Isaac while he lived there. Since the past 
has given the land to the men who had 
these qualities, it is possible that the con- 
trol of the future will come to the man 
who has inherited them. Jacob ponders 

55 



The Story of Joseph 

the dreams, because they may after all be 
true. 

Little is said about Jacob's inner life, until 
at its very close he himself tells what were 
the things which meant most to him — the 
first altar he built and the first grave he 
dug. The silence is largely due to the fact 
that, after stormy passages, the life has found 
its great lines of development. When 
voyagers set out over dim and perilous seas, 
it is fascinating to hear of what befell them 
on the way, and how they bore themselves 
before unexpected dangers. But, when they 
have reached their haven and built their 
homes, interest in their proceedings is apt 
to flag, for they do in their homes very 
much what all men do, work and are happy. 
It is diflScult to interest men in happiness. 
When the soul has found its peace, its 
blessedness is hard to describe. What God's 
fellowship means, only the spirit which lives 
in it can rightly measure, but it can never 
rightly tell. Not only because the matter is 
too large for utterance, but because it is 
difficult to tell what bread does. It satisfies. 

56 



Jacob 



The contented heart finds its satisfaction in 
God. Jacob has had more difficulty than 
many men to conquer himself and learn the 
peace of God's will : but that fills the heart 
of the wise, patient old man who sits in his 
tent in the evening of his life with the know- 
ledge of how few are the things which cannot 
be borne. 

To him comes the news that his favourite 
son is dead. Death is a sore test ; for, when 
a man has learned how few things are indis- 
pensable, he grapples the few things more 
closely to his heart ; and love is chief among 
the few. The death of a child is a terrible 
test to a father as to whether he can any 
longer believe that the Ruler of all means 
well by him. Jacob believed that not only 
had his hope in his favourite son come to an 
end, but that the one of his race who could 
carry on the great tradition had been cut off. 
To him, as he crouches in his tent over the 
stained robe, it seems as though not only 
his hope, but the hope of Israel, had come 
to an end. To the narrator, as he tells the 
story, there are present the fulfilment of all 

57 



The Story of Joseph 

Jacob ever attempted and the beginning of 
a vaster achievement. God has His purpose 
to fulfil : and behind man's envy and human 
hunger is He who can guide all things so 
that they bring to pass His will. 

2. What might have been — A Dream. 

There was a man who had a vision. And 
in his dream it seemed that he stood on a 
mound in the desert beside the caravan-track 
which runs through Edom to the frontier of 
Egypt, and that an angel stood on his right 
hand. It was night, but a crescent moon 
hung clear in the sky. By its light he could 
see a group of black tents at the wayside, 
and even, since one of these had been left 
open to the night air, could see the five men 
and a lad who occupied it. The boy was a 
captive, for his hands and feet were bound ; 
but, while the others slept, he had gnawed 
through the thong on his right wrist, and 
was writhing himself free from his bonds 
with the silent supple movements of a healthy 
animal. As he writhed, a yellow cur began 
to bay the moon outside, and the sound 

58 



Jacob 

threatened to wake one of the men, who 
already turned uneasily in his sleep. 

A great passion of sympathy with the 
captive boy, one against five, ran through 
the watcher, and he made as though he 
would strangle or drive away the baying cur. 
But the angel touched him on the arm to 
say, "You may not meddle with these, for 
they are real." Turning him round, 
however, he showed* the same scene on the 
other side, and said " You may do what you 
will with these." 

So the man, being very sure of his own 
purpose and its wisdom, drove away the 
baying cur, so that the sleeper merely 
grunted once or twice in his sleep, and then 
lay still. The lad was able to steal out of 
the tent unheeded, and, breathing deeply 
once or twice, to run for liberty. All the 
night he ran, steering by the stars : all the 
day he hid, to sleep and prepare for further 
flight. When dawn was breaking on the 
second day, he ran into the tent of an old 
man, who held a stained cloak even in his 
broken sleep. The two fell into each 

59 



The Story of Joseph 

other's arms, and the man who had the 
vision was more satisfied than ever with the 
thing he had done. 

The scene shifted, as scenes do in our 
dreams, and leave us undisturbed by the 
rapid change. All the land lay panting 
under a long drought. The cracked and 
gaping earth yielded nothing, for the streams 
had dried up. Men in Canaan ate the last 
of their poor stores, and at last, when 
nothing was left, set off Southward to see 
whether they might yet find corn in Egypt. 
But, when they reached the frontier, they 
found it closely guarded to prevent any 
from passing that way. The famine was in 
Egypt, and there had been none to advise 
the storing of the provision from the 
plenteous years. So Egypt permitted no 
more hungry mouths to enter her territory, 
and set a patrol to guard her frontier. 
Wearily the travellers turned to go, but with 
the death of hope half their number died. 
The weak and the old and the little children 
dropped beside the route, where men had no 
heart left to bury them. And, when the 

60 



Jacob 



strongest came back to Palestine, the 
Canaanite devoured the remnant. The 
fairest of the women went into Phoenician 
harems, and bore children who were taught 
to worship Baal and Ashtoreth. The men 
were drafted into slave-gangs, tugged at the 
oars of the Tyrian war-galleys, died in the 
Tarshish mines. 

The Canaanite waxed strong in the land, 
so strong that, when Assyria and Babylonia 
broke into the West, he was able to with- 
stand their onset. Tyre and Sidon leagued 
themselves together, gave unity of purpose 
to all the Canaanites, and were able to resist 
the attack from the East. They began to 
stretch out their arms over the coveted 
Mediterranean, from access to which they 
had held back the new-comers, and to build 
up colonies. Carthage in North Africa, 
Massilia in France, Tarshish in Spain, had 
already succoured the mother country 
against the wasting of Asshurbani-pal and 
the rush of Nebuchadrezzar ; and their 
success bound them more closely together 
and made them more insolent in their 

6i 



The Story of Joseph 

strength. They set themselves to turn the 
Mediterranean into a Canaanite lake. 

The dreamer was now in Rome ; and it 
was not Rome, confident in her power, sell- 
ing the site of Hannibal's tent in open 
market, but Rome, hunger-bitten and 
afraid, gathering her strength for a last 
struggle with Carthage. She had conquered 
once and twice, but her victories had been 
wasted, for beaten Carthage had called on 
unbeaten Tyre, and Tyre had sent triremes, 
warriors, food. Rome was at her last re- 
sources. The dreamer saw a slow proces- 
sion wind down from the Capitol, where the 
leaders had gone up to make their vows to 
the gods and pray for their protection. He 
stood at Ostia and saw them embark on 
the last ships Rome could equip for what 
must decide her fate. And in the crowd 
which watched with him he saw no able- 
bodied men, he noted that the very cordage 
of some of the triremes was made of the hair 
of women, he felt that the public treasury 
was drained to the last sesterces. 

He watched the triremes go, and he 
62 



Jacob 

watched till he saw one come back like a 
wounded bird, trailing its slow way across 
the sea to announce that to-morrow the 
Carthaginians would be in Ostia. 

He looked abroad and saw all Europe. 
In it there was no Rome with her law, no 
Judaea with her faith. No Roman had 
marched out, planting his firm feet on the 
lands, sending his long sure roads across 
mountain and morass to bind the nations 
into one, and to teach them the meaning 
of an ordered peace. And there had been 
no Judaea to lift before the vision of the 
men who travelled on those roads, the 
promise of the city which hath foundations, 
whose builder and maker is God. There 
was nothing but the Canaanite with his 
cynical worship of the power of money, his 
radical disbelief in human liberty, his sweat- 
ing slave-gangs and his beastly gods. 

And, as the man looked and bethought 
himself, he remembered how in his self- 
confidence he had silenced the yellow cur 
that bayed the moon. As he remembered, 
he bowed his head between his knees to 

63 



The Story of Joseph 

weep over the thing he had done. But, a^ 
he bent, the angel stooped, and raising him 
up, turned his face the other way. 

3. A Glimpse of what was, and is. 

There was the desert with the caravan 
road winding through it. The crescent 
moon was paling out before the dawn. The 
cool breeze was making early travel pleasant, 
and southward, swinging down the long road 
to Egypt was a bunch of camels. High 
on the back of one was Joseph, the bond- 
slave of Midian, the bond-slave of God's 
purpose in His world. 

Men are but shuttles flung to and fro by 
the hand of Omnipotence ; but, as He flings 
them. He weaves evermore His own purpose, 
the ends of His Providence, the aims of His 
redemption. And the Hebrew believed, not 
only that there was such a purpose, but that 
it was given to him to know something of 
its meaning. The thoughts of God were 
very great, but were not strange thoughts to 
him. They were controlled not only by an 
omnipotence which he could never fathom, 

64 



Jacob 

but by a wisdom which he was invited to 
share, and by a love and pity on which he 
could rely. Because he believed it, he put 
his hand to his work, weak and faltering 
though it was, with a new humility and a 
new confidence, for it was taken up and 
fulfilled by the might of God. The faith 
gave him victory over the world ; for, having 
it, he could endure captivity and put the 
world under his feet. 

"Jacob dwelt in the land of his fathers' 
sojournings : now these are the generations 
of Jacob." A man is but the link between 
the past and the future, yet he may bind 
them together by faith in the unseen Provi- 
dence which controls them both. 



65 



JOSEPH'S SUCCESS 



JOSEPH'S SUCCESS 

The narrative shifts to a new scene. Joseph 
is past the struggles of poverty. Freed from 
the prison, he has gained money and power 
and an assured position in Egypt. He is 
past all his trials, we are apt to think ; but 
that is not the view of the Hebrew writer. 
To him Joseph is only past the trials of 
poverty, and has now to face the greater trial 
of possessions. He has said good-bye to 
the temptations of the slave, and has now to 
meet the temptations of the free and power- 
ful. And so the writer does not merely 
relate how Joseph won liberty and money 
and power ; he tells also what Joseph did 
with these things after they were won, and 
especially he tells what Joseph did when he 
had power over the brothers who had wronged 

69 



The Story of Joseph 

him. In that he saw a test of manhood and 
faith. 

I. The Touchstone of Character. 

It was one of the conventions of the older 
novelists that the hero was brought after 
many strenuous efforts to the church door 
and was there dismissed, a married man. So 
far as it recognised that a man then reached 
a great end of right effort, it was no mean 
convention, since it realised that he who has 
won love has won the best thing in the 
world's gift, better even than runners before 
one's chariot or multitudes bowing the knee. 
But it was a weak convention in so far as it 
failed to see that what makes men is the 
habitual attitude they take to the great things 
of life after they have won them. What a 
man does with his money after he has made 
it, how he bears himself to love when he has 
won it, go to determine his spiritual man- 
hood. 

Yet it is unhappily true that many men 
grow uninteresting after they have gained 
some assured position. The desire even for 

70 



Joseph's Success 

outward success in life, and for a place in 
which a man's personal influence tells, 
quickens the spiritual faculties. We are 
watchful then, we show self-control and 
patience, we strengthen our will to do and 
bear. But when the goal we have set to 
ourselves is reached, how often the life 
becomes relaxed, and at once the man be- 
comes a lay figure on which his outward 
trappings are hung. Men feel that he has 
grown less interesting, and so he has. The 
man is hidden behind things. 

Success is a test to every institution as 
well as to every man. There is hardly a 
finer record of a spiritual struggle bravely 
fought out than the story of the Ten Years 
Conflict. One of the things which are finer, 
is the Disruption in which it issued. For 
clear assertion of principle, for patient re- 
assertion of it after it was aspersed, for readi- 
ness to sacrifice much toward its final victory, 
it has little to set beside it in Scottish Church 
history. Then came the period of success, 
and with success weakness which the period 
of struggle had not shown. For then came 

71 



The Story of Joseph 

the inclination to lean on past deeds instead 
of using them as Christ's summons to a 
nobler service. Then came the claim to 
possess truth as a peculiar property of one 
Church, instead of the recognition that it was 
a gift of God's grace to men. 

God's grant of success is a subtle touch- 
stone. It forms the test of whether men 
have really set their heart on a spiritual 
thing, on liberty as the means to do what 
they like, or as the necessary means to listen 
for a higher voice and to obey. If a man 
have set his heart on a great thing, he will 
accept God's gift of success as a means of 
winning the great thing, and will grow 
stronger thereby. If he have set his heart 
on a little thing, he will take his success and 
sit down to enjoy it. 

Perhaps one thing which helped to steady 
Joseph in his hour of brilliant recognition 
was that the thing he won was so far beyond 
what he could ever have hoped to gain. His 
success came to him, a gift, surprising and 
strange, from men. And it came, not merely 
because of his ability, but because of his 

72 



Joseph's Success 

character. He interprets Pharaoh's dream. 
When the courtiers are bewildered before 
the thought of the unexpected misfortune 
which is about to fall upon themselves and 
their country, he tells what must be done to 
meet the emergency. The men were, of 
course, impressed by the power to interpret 
the dream ; but what manifestly impressed 
them most was the bearing of the man who 
was the means of interpreting it. Here was 
a man who had the fear of God before his 
eyes, who had clean hands, whose character 
had been braced by adversity, who had shown 
himself capable of considering not his own 
interests only, but the interests of his master 
and his fellow-slaves. He was fit to do more 
than interpret dreams, he was fit to hold 
power. They felt themselves safe in his 
hands. That was what told, and what ought 
always to tell. Influence and power over 
the destinies of other men belong in the end 
to the men who rid their minds of private 
and selfish hopes, and who live as before the 
Judge of all. Men feel themselves safe 
with those whose lives they recognise to be 

n 



The Story of Joseph 

governed by the unseen power of God. 
Power comes to such men, often more than 
they care to take, always power which they 
fear to use. But their fear to use it is the 
guarantee that they recognise their responsi- 
bility for it, and that in using it they will not 
lose their own souls. 

2. The Ideal and the Reward of Love. 

As to the policy which Joseph followed 
in order to diminish the sufFering brought 
by the famine on the people of Egypt, 
there is not much that needs to be said here. 
Such a scheme as is described in detail in 
Scripture must be judged on its own merits 
and in view of the conditions of its own time ; 
and then its discussion is best left in the 
hands of students of social history. But 
there is a larger aspect of the question on 
which a few words may be said. The 
worldly wisdom which formulates such plans 
and rightly claims to review them, is always 
apt to degenerate into a shallow cleverness 
that does not grasp how a great purpose of 
all human society and the chief reason why 

74 



Joseph's Success 

it should exist at all is to keep men alive 
in famine and to bring them to the highest 
measure of well-being. It loses sight of 
the ideal elements that keep human society 
together, and so loses frequently the spirit 
of charity. Now charity is so often the 
larger wisdom. It might have been possible 
to keep Pharaoh's throne erect, though the 
rulers, engrossed in care for their own safety, 
had left the multitudes to die. But 
Pharaoh's throne was given a more stable 
foundation, because his policy at this time 
was controlled by Joseph. And Joseph 
had known all the changes and chances 
of human life, and through them all had 
preserved charity. He had ordered his 
life in its weakness and in its glory by 
the holy justice of God. He had kept his 
heart, in poverty and in wealth, from the 
control of discontent and selfishness. Such 
a man is given an insight into the ideal 
foundations of the most earthly power. 
Pharaoh was secure and his throne was 
stayed up, because behind him was one who 
had not forgotten the heart of a slave even 

75 



The Story of Joseph 

after he had become the second man in 
Egypt. 

How rich in human sympathy the man 
remained, in his power as in his day of 
weakness, the Hebrew writer shows us again. 
He was prosperous ; he was the king's 
right-hand man ; he wore the signs of his 
dignity when he rode abroad among bowing 
multitudes ; he was married into one of the 
old families of Egypt. But it was not till 
his child was laid in his arms that he said, 
" God hath caused me to forget all my toil, 
and all my father's house." There speaks 
the heart of a man, an exile. He has been 
lonely through the prison, lonely before the 
throne, lonely in his chariot along the bowing 
streets, until God in His goodness gave him 
a home. 

This was all a man : a man, when he 
proved in the dungeon that he could live 
by principle though none supported him ; 
a man, when he acknowledged in his success 
that the heart of a man needs love for its 
strength and fulness. 



76 



VI 

THE BRETHREN IN THE FAMINE 



VI 

THE BRETHREN IN THE FAMINE 

The story never loses sight of the fact that 
what it has to tell is the birth of a nation ; 
and SO5 while it speaks about individual lives, 
it constantly interweaves their fate and their 
fortunes with the larger unity of which they 
form a part. Joseph had gone down into 
Egypt in order to provide food and a new 
settlement for his brethren, and from his 
side everything is ready. Everything is 
ready except the men : and now the story 
turns back to tell how they were made ready. 
Joseph can give his brethren food and land 
in Goshen, but it needs more than food- 
supplies and pasture-lands to make a nation. 
It needs men, and these are not yet the 
men who can make a nation. Disunited, 
mutually distrustful, with the memory of 

79 



The Story of Joseph 

a mutual crime on their consciences and with 
no great bond of a spiritual sort to bind them 
together, they would, had they been brought 
thus into contact with Egypt, have simply 
dissolved. Egypt would have swallowed 
them up, and they would have merged into 
the population of the land where they settled, 
when they went thither to seek bread. 

I. A Change of Environment. 

We are told that a change of environment 
will bring most other changes behind it, 
and that food in abundance in place of 
scarcity, certainty of tenure in room of in- 
security, will change everything. The first 
part of the statement is very greatly true, 
but the second part, with its underlying 
definition of environment, only shows how 
material our judgment has become. En- 
vironment is too subtle a thing to be so 
crassly defined : that is exactly why it is so 
powerful. There are some things which 
come closer to a man than the house in 
which he lives or the food he eats, even 
the prayers and ideals in which his spirit 

80 



The Brethren in the Famine 

is at home. Through their power he can 
transform even the most unfavourable out- 
ward surroundings. Without their presence 
he can sink among the most favourable. 

The story tells how the spiritual horizon 
of the brethren was widened, so that they 
were bound together into the unity of a 
people and became capable of remaining 
Israel even in Egypt. 

There was something in the famine itself 
to quicken their thought. When it fell 
upon them, their own strength became no 
longer able to win, their own cleverness no 
longer competent to plan, subsistence for 
themselves. Their wonted occupations are 
gone, and have taken away their self-reliance. 
They stand, strong men, before their worn- 
out father and have to acknowledge that 
he is a better man than they. 

At his bidding they go down into Egypt 
and feel the strength of this old and ordered 
civilisation. Here men have bound them- 
selves together to meet a catastrophe which 
they cannot avert. The brethren find human 
society going on still, though with dragging 

8i 



The Story of Joseph 

wheels, while their own society has tumbled 
into pieces at the shrewd touch of famine. 
They feel themselves helpless atoms, with 
nothing to meet one of the great events 
which come to all men. And these strong, 
lustful desert dwellers, accustomed to go 
on their insolent and self-reliant way, 
accustomed to want and take, are cowed. 
The helplessness of man against the mighty 
forces of the world is driven in upon them. 
Carried too far, the sense becomes a weak- 
ness : but without it how vain and individual 
and insolent man can be ! 

There are men about whom a wise man 
wrote " because they have no changes, there- 
fore they fear not God." Such men are 
well known. The world has gone well with 
them. Their business has prospered greatly : 
and, if there have been troubles, these have 
been such as human shrewdness could foresee 
or extra effort put right. They have been 
little visited by the great things like death 
and sorrow, or, if they have been visited 
by these, have put them aside. And their 
world often shrinks together into the little 

82 



The Brethren in the Famine 

world they know. Their morality becomes 
a code of petty prudence. Their hope 
shrinks into caution. Such men cannot 
found a nation where men must rely on 
each other. Therefore, when God called 
Abraham, He shook him out of the lap of the 
accustomed thing to the hills of Palestine. 
When the people came to its new birth, the 
patriarchs fled before famine into Egypt. 

When they came, Joseph dealt roughly 
with them. He distrusted their words, 
— these men who distrusted each other. 
He cross-questioned them as to their in- 
tentions and their past, and finally he flung 
them into prison. For the liberal air of 
the hills and the scent of the tamarisk when 
the dew is drying on it, they have to exchange 
the close air of a prison in flat Egypt. 
They, who all their lives have waited on no 
man's bidding, nor consulted any other's 
convenience, are at the caprice of one man. 

The first outcome is that they learn the 
uses of a family. They hold together, they 
maintain each other, they serve each other. 
They begin to live in social bonds when 

83 



The Story of Joseph 

they live In prison. It is one of the fatal 
blindnesses which affect the man who has 
only known success, that he fails to see how 
it is not of his own making. He fails to see 
how he stands on the work and failure, the 
hope and prayer of dead men. He fails to 
recognise how, without that slow building up 
of society in which he had no hand, there 
would have been no place for his energy and 
no security. He fails to feel his debt, his 
quite infinite debt, for all which he has 
received. He does not realise that the men 
who serve him are as necessary to him as he 
is to them. The men learned the gracious 
meaning of our mutual dependence in 
prison. 

Further, as they sat there, there rose out 
of the dim recesses of memory a distant day 
which all had tried to forget, some had 
succeeded in forgetting. They saw the 
fresh young face of their brother, convulsed 
with fear, as they lowered him into the 
pit. They recalled the hour when they 
dined together with indifference to his pain. 
And they saw a fitness in things which 

84 



The Brethren in the Famine 

ordered that they in turn should be brought 
so low. " We are verily guilty concerning 
our brother, in that we saw the distress of 
his soul, when he besought us and we would 
not hear. Therefore is this distress come 
upon us.'' These were teachable men, in 
whom their old life had not deadened all 
sense of the infinite justice of things. And 
they could see it, not when it was dealing 
with the universe in general, but when it 
was dealing with themselves. That God is 
just, that every base thing a man has done 
shall find its adequate requital somehow and 
at some hour, is not, thank God, the ultimate 
word in religion. But it is a great word, 
that sense which God in His mercy has set 
deep in the consciences of men, that " fearful 
looking for of judgment." And, though 
deadened in the eager world, it often waits 
for men when they are shut up to their 
thoughts. 

2. A Change of Attitude. 

The group, graver, humbler, stronger 
men went back to Palestine. They have 

85 



The Story of Joseph 

come through strange things and have 
learned from them, and they returned to 
their father, who did not know all that had 
happened to them. He has sat brooding 
over the past, while they are already thinking 
new thoughts and feeling their way to a 
more fruitful future. They came back with 
a new sense of their solidarity and responsi- 
bility. And he tells them " all these things 
are against me''' He does not feel that they 
are likely greatly to care about or understand 
his sorrows, for he has no reason to believe 
them capable of realising what the loss of 
Joseph, the loss of Simeon, and the departure 
of Benjamin mean to him. And the men 
must lay their hands on their mouths and 
recognise that he is just. Their father has 
but too good cause, from his past knowledge 
of them, to believe that they are careless of 
his sorrows, and they will need to prove their 
changed thoughts by their deeds. 

Men who have been deeply moved to new 
religious convictions or higher ideals of life 
often find that their world has not moved 
with them. And it comes upon them like 

86 



The Brethren in the Famine 

a dash of cold water that their old associates 
expect from them the same attitude as before, 
and that good men do not trust them at 
once. It is startling to discover how im- 
mobile the facts of life are for one who has 
changed his attitude to all the facts of life : 
and it is a wholesome shock. For men are 
required to live by the power of every new 
conviction they win, and only through life 
does it become their own. 

How greatly the brethren learned, and 
how deep was the change in their character, 
the story reveals in its own way. It is not 
the habit of the Hebrew historians to describe 
men's feelings. There is never any subtle 
analysis of motives or picture of emotions in 
the Old Testament. What they give instead 
is a plain statement of what men did and 
said, from which it is possible to conclude as 
to where and how their feelings have changed. 
Now it is noteworthy how from this stage 
in the story, tender and beautiful sayings 
begin to appear in connection with the 
attitude of the brethren. Thus, when they 
present their demand for Benjamin to Jacob, 

^7 



The Story of Joseph 

the old father utters words which in their 
restraint and quietness yet touch the very 
heart of sorrow. " Joseph is not, and Simeon 
is not, and ye will take Benjamin away." He 
cries in his desolation, " all these things are 
against me." While the words show his 
isolation from his ten sons and form a just 
rebuke to them, they also convey the burden 
of old age, the strain on many women, the 
sorrow of all the people who have to be 
passive when others can act. The brethren 
could go down with Benjamin into Egypt, 
and, if necessary, try to protect him ; but he 
must sit at home and wait for news. One 
feels the anguish of the women and men 
who are called to bear. Yet, when that cry 
has been wrung from him, Jacob rises up 
with a calm dignity and puts aside Judah's 
proposal to deliver over his children as 
hostages for Benjamin's safe return. He 
does not even mention it ; for, if Benjamin 
were lost through Judah's fault, what use 
would it be to Jacob to have Judah's sons 
in his power ? " If I am bereaved, I am 
bereaved." 

88 



The Brethren in the Famine 

3. A Change of Life. 

How keenly the men have felt the situation 
and how deeply they have been impressed 
by it, is best seen in Judah's great plea before 
his unknown brother. "And we said unto 
my lord, We have a father, an old man, and 
a child of his old age, a little one ; and his 
brother is dead, and he alone is left of his 
mother, and his father loveth him. . . . Now 
therefore when I come to thy servant my 
father, and the lad be not with us ; seeing 
that his life is bound up in the lad's life ; it 
shall come to pass, when he seeth that the 
lad is not with us, that he will die : and thy 
servants shall bring down the grey hairs of 
thy servant our father with sorrow to the 
grave. . . . Now therefore let thy servant, 
I pray thee, abide instead of the lad a bond- 
man to my lord ; and let the lad go up with 
his brethren. For how shall I go up to my 
father, and the lad be not with me ? " 

Such things increase in the later chapters, 
because they are in place there. The men 
had learned to feel them, as they had never 

89 



The Story of Joseph 

done before. Judah could say such a thing 
now, because he could feel such a thing now. 
The brethren remembered nothing of their 
father's lament when Joseph's blood-dabbled 
cloak was spread before him. His lament 
fell on deaf ears then : it does not fall on 
deaf ears now, for the men have learned 
sympathy in the school of adversity. 

There is a hard strain in human nature. 
Few creatures are more cruel than a healthy 
boy. Strong men will subscribe to in- 
firmaries, but will send their wives to inquire 
for a sick friend. The infirmary is a con- 
venient place for huddling the sick out of 
sight, where other men are free from the 
intolerable claim. The poor-house is a 
convenient place for relieving the prosper- 
ous from the painful claim of the broken- 
down. 

The brethren have seen their children 
hunger-bitten and have been impotent to 
give them food. They have tasted for 
themselves exile, suspicion, prison. They 
have learned a new humane sense of the 
infinite pathos of life. Sympathy is sufFer- 

90 



The Brethren in the Famine 

ing along with other men : and, while there 
are some gracious natures which seem to 
learn it by instinct, there are more who only 
learn it through the sharp discipline of God's 
grace. 

The men, then, are greatly changed. They 
have learned the futility of envy and suspicion, 
and how mutual trust is the cement which 
holds life together. Their hearts have been 
awed by the sense of how the heart of things 
is just, for they have seen justice, not as a 
quality of which they desire to see more in 
the world, but as bringing them in guilty. 
Their souls have been touched to the tender 
uses of pity. 

What remains to be required from them ? 
This remains, the proof that they have 
departed from their sin and can be trusted 
anew with life. It is one thing to hate an 
old sin at the time when it has brought a 
man to failure ; it is another not to do it 
again, when it seems the only means of 
escape from failure. 

So, on what seemed their final and cheer- 
ful return from Egypt, the steward overtook 

91 



The Story of Joseph 

them with a loud accusation of theft. Sack 
by sack was emptied ; and with each fruitless 
search their triumph over a false accuser 
grew. At last the sack of the youngest 
showed gleaming among the rustling wheat 
the redder gold of the hateful cup. And at 
once, without question or hesitation, they 
reloaded their asses, turned their backs on 
their hopes of home, and, with their younger 
brother in their midst, went back to bondage. 
Consider what they did. They refused to 
fall back into the sin of the selfish betrayal 
of their brother. It would have been easier 
to do, and far easier to justify than in the 
case of Joseph. What offers itself to them 
is not exactly the same temptation ; but it 
never is the same temptation that is offered 
to any one. Life never takes men back to 
the old place where they fell before : it 
brings them to new places. So the thought- 
less say that experience is useless, because 
experience never repeats itself. In truth, 
nothing ever repeats itself. There is always 
some colouring in the sky which makes 
each sunset something unique : and there 

92 



The Brethren in the Famine 

is always some shade of difference between 
yesterday's temptation and that of to-day 
which makes men able to say, if they desire 
it, that they were taken by surprise. That 
is why Christ gave men, not a rule which 
will only fit the conditions that gave rise to 
it, but an ideal which will fit every condition. 
It was possible that Benjamin had stolen 
that cup. In any case, to deliver him up 
was only to make sure that the matter should 
be inquired into and justice done. That 
being so, there was no reason why they 
should all go back with him, and delay for 
some time longer the needed relief for their 
starving families in Palestine. Indeed, in 
view of the urgent needs of the women and 
children it might even be expedient that one 
man die for the people and so the whole 
nation perish not. Any one with a little 
imagination can frame an excellent case for 
their riding on. But they acted on their 
first impulse, the impulse of humbled and 
repentant hearts, and they went back. Un- 
condemned they will not leave Benjamin 
alone. Friendless they will not leave him 

93 



The Story of Joseph 

at all. The men have learned once for all 
that they cannot again deny the brotherly 
love which they once denied. Experience 
has been enough to make their repentance 
into that gracious thing which watches 
against the return of sin, that holy careful- 
ness which is a safeguard. Their victory 
has been won. 



94 



VII 
THE RECONCILIATION 



VII 

THE RECONCILIATION 

It is deeply interesting and instructive to 
notice how the attitude of the ten brethren 
changes. They appear at the beginning so 
confident in themselves, and so prompt in 
dealing with a situation as it emerges. They 
know exactly what to do, when the business 
before them is that of dealing with a difficult 
younger brother, and they have a ready 
scheme to meet the questions of their father 
as to what has become of his favourite son. 
But life grows larger and full of strange 
issues which they are not able to measure or 
control. They stand bewildered before the 
novelty of the famine. Yet that is only a 
physical condition, and their bewilderment 
merely proves that they have something to 
learn. But from that time their estate be- 

97 



The Story of Joseph 

comes always more complex and more 
difficult. 

I. A Power that Baffles and Bewilders. 

It is as though they were in the grasp 
of some greater force, which was bearing 
them on, whether they will or not, to an 
end which they cannot foresee. They are 
like men who are borne down by a cataract 
which they cannot stem. They are forced 
to look back into their past and to recall to 
memory the old sin which they had long for- 
gotten : they are brought face to face with a 
stern justice in things, which controls their 
actions and even their thoughts. One event 
after another befalls them with which they 
feel themselves powerless to deal. They do 
not know how to answer suspicion or to 
meet the accusation of being spies ; they do 
not know what to do about the money which 
has been restored to them. Bewilderment 
pursues them, so that they cannot find their 
way. Yet, bit by bit, they learn how to 
deal with each situation as it rises. From 
life they learn humility and a new sense of 

98 



The Reconciliation 

loyalty and truth and sincerity and honour 
towards their brother. And at the end they 
find in the strange force which has baffled 
and bewildered them the figure of their 
wronged brother. And he assures them of 
his unchanged affection and of his entire 
confidence in them. He gives them there- 
with more than food and shelter and safety, 
for he gives them back confidence in them- 
selves, and reconciles them anew with life. 

Men have often seen in that attitude of 
Joseph a type of Jesus Christ ; and, though 
the analogy has been carried into those 
details which are a perpetual snare to the 
student of types, the parallel is on broad 
lines very close. Men are still troubled 
and perplexed, as the brethren were. They 
have for a time gone their own way, taking 
things as they came, without much thought 
as to whether there is any definite end to 
human life ; and therefore they have not 
hesitated to admit into their lives certain 
baser elements. They have escaped from 
some perplexities by lies ; they have obtained 
pleasures for which they hungered by dis- 

99 



The Story of Joseph 

loyalty to honour. There are, accordingly, 
some things In their lives which it is not 
pleasant to recall ; but men enter into the 
common conspiracy of silence, which agrees 
to shroud such matters by ignoring them. 
They resolve to do as the world does, 
which is to live as though these things were 
not there. Somehow or other, — nobody 
presumes to say how, — that which is crooked 
will become straight, if only nobody calls it 
crooked or thinks of it as crooked. Somehow 
or other matters will right themselves. 

2. A Power, that makes for Righteousness. 

In the experience of many men, life, 
suddenly as it might seem and unaccount- 
ably, begins to persist in showing that it has 
moral issues and in bringing them home. 
Some force has been loosened by their action, 
which seems now to act of its own accord. 
Matters do not right themselves, but rather 
persist in showing themselves all wrong. 
Uneasiness, which often passes into dull 
remorse, begins to weigh heavily on the 
heart. It can be dispelled by close attention 

lOO 



The Reconciliation 

to other interests or by excitement, but it 
comes back. It can be kept as much as 
possible at arm's-length : but, even when it is 
not acutely felt, it remains as a cloud over the 
spirit, a damper to real joy, a weight on all 
forward looking hopes. Or the shortness of 
life begins to thrust itself on the attention. 
That also men can keep by active eagerness 
at arm's-length ; but sometimes the arms are 
too weary and the anxiety too great for them 
to succeed in keeping anything off. It begins 
to creep in when it will. Joy and sorrow 
alike help to call for it : joy, because it is so 
short-lived and so uncertain ; sorrow, because 
it has such tremendous power to make all 
men sincere. And so the thought of it, the 
mastering thought of it, takes slow posses- 
sion of the heart. 

Men discover then, as the ten brethren 
did, that they are in the hands of some 
power which is older and stronger than 
themselves, which is drawing them on, 
however much against their will, which is 
impelling them to an end that they cannot 
welcome because they cannot foresee it. Life 
lOI 



The Story of Joseph 

discovers how it is not a haphazard thing, 
but a unity. It reveals how every deed 
and thought go out from men's careless lives 
to become a tissue of consequences from 
which they cannot break free. Life makes 
ever clearer how it has its great issues 
appointed by One who through it fulfils His 
tremendous and unchangeable purpose : and 
men are and often betray how they are like 
creatures that are trapped and cannot escape. 

3. A Power that makes for Mercy. 

But, when men deal with that strange life 
sincerely and with singleness of purpose, 
they are brought to meet Him " who is able 
to open the book." They find how God 
has not troubled them in vain, but has called 
them to see the large and liberal purpose 
that is through all the tangle of human life. 
And Christ transforms life ; for the constrain- 
ing power against which they have fought so 
long becomes the wise and great and holy 
will of the Father. To accept it frankly, 
to fling aside all evasions, to be done with 
false refuges, is to be reconciled with life, and 
102 



The Reconciliation 

to find how the tangle simplifies Itself slowly 
and steadily. " In His will is our peace," and 
in submission to it our strength. So often 
men fight against it, even as little children, 
fretful and sleepy, fight against the sleep 
which would make all their fretfulness im- 
possible. But when they cast off insincerity 
and false choices and deal truly with them- 
selves, the forgiveness of God will avail to 
make life new, because it avails to make anew 
the men who meet it. 

Joseph forgave his brethren : and that 
seems to many a very natural and simple 
thing to do in the circumstances. But along 
with his forgiveness he also said a singularly 
great and far-reaching thing, for he told 
them of his conviction that through all 
their past and his past had run an over- 
ruling purpose of good, and that God, 
without their knowledge and apart from 
their intention, had used their hard-hearted- 
ness and cruelty toward their brother in order 
to prepare a home for all Israel in Egypt. 
How did he come to utter that in such a 
connection and, from a slight matter like 
103 



The Story of Joseph 

his forgiveness, to draw so vast a conclusion ? 
Is it not because, when one touches for- 
giveness at all, whether in giving or in 
receiving it, one is in contact with some- 
thing which in its own nature is of the 
highest and gives rise to endless thoughts ? 
In forgiveness, spirit deals with spirit directly. 
In forgiveness, men are dealing not first 
with things nor even with the consequences 
of acts, not with laws, but with God. 
There God breaks in, as it were, on life ; 
and we become conscious of how even the 
evil we have done, with all its terrible and 
apparently irretrievable consequences, is not 
outside His control. He can master it, 
since He can give new hope to us who have 
committed it. Forgiveness is a miracle, it 
is indeed the miracle of grace ; and as such 
it is apt to lift us up to a wider view of 
what it implies to be in God's hands. He 
can govern even evil ; He governed even 
evil, when we gave Him in our lives little 
else, to fulfil something of His ends. Is 
not that what the life, humbled, repentant, 
weak, awake to a sense of what it has done, 
104 



The Reconciliation 

craves to know ? And in the assurance of 
forgiveness it finds what it needs. God has 
governed the past, even when we forgot 
Him. He made something out of the 
poor service which we offered Him. Men, 
who see His face in forgiveness and the 
wonder of His power and mercy, can set 
their faces humbly forward. For God, who 
could control them even in their rebellion, 
can out of their repentant lives build up 
something which will become a part of His 
almighty purpose for good. 



105 



VIII 
THE END: JOSEPH AND JACOB 



VIII 

THE END: JOSEPH AND JACOB 

Even the most careless reader cannot fail 
to notice how broken and confused the 
closing accounts are. In the earlier chapters 
there is one commanding interest, round 
which all the rest are so grouped that they 
fall naturally into their place. But, as the 
story draws to its close, we pass from a list 
of the sons of Jacob who transferred them- 
selves into Egypt to an account of Jacob 
before Pharaoh, from that personal and 
moving scene to a relation of the public 
policy which Joseph pursued during the 
period of the famine, from that again to 
another intimate scene of Jacob blessing his 
grandchildren. In great part the piecemeal 
character of the narrative is the evidence of 
how in its present form it has come to us 
109 



The Story of Joseph 

from several writers, each of whom had his 
own peculiar interest. Hitherto we have 
been under the guidance of a special historian 
who gathered his material from different 
sources, but who wove that material together 
with great skill into a continued narrative. 
Here and there a closer examination shows 
that he has owed his account to different 
sources which can still be disentangled ; but 
he has used these with great skill to make a 
unity. The closing sections rather show the 
materials taken from different sources and 
lying side by side. They are not woven 
together ; the one thing which connects them 
is that they bear on the early history of Israel 
in Egypt. 

I. The Paternal Blessing. 

The brethren have found their place, and 
now the two men in the family, the two men 
who have made it, are left face to face. And 
there is something very fine in the instinctive 
respect which Joseph shows to his old father. 
He is represented as having risen to the 
position of being next to the king of Egypt ; 
IIO 



The End : Joseph and Jacob 

he has practically saved all his father's house 
from death by famine. He and his sons 
have enjoyed opportunities which neither his 
brothers nor his father ever had. He is a 
great man. And, because he is really a great 
man in soul as well as estate, he no sooner 
hears that Jacob is ill than he comes to ask 
for the old man's blessing and counsel. 

The strong family tie has always been 
characteristic of Judaism. The house-father 
was counted priest and chief in his own 
home ; and those who owed him life and 
later advancement were expected to acknow- 
ledge it. Joseph was no isolated, fortunate 
adventurer in Egypt. He belonged to a 
people, and so he brought his sons, the 
children of an Egyptian mother, to take the 
blessing of his father. 

Perhaps, too, Joseph has recognised the 
latent power in Jacob since he himself came 
to bear responsibility in Egypt. Men looked 
to him for guidance ; with the usual irre- 
soluteness of humanity they preferred to put 
the cares of their government on a capable 
man. And he has found that the only thing 
III 



The Story of Joseph 

a man can do then is to trust God and trust 
himself and take the responsibility. He has 
not been in the habit of looking round irre- 
solutely for other men's lead. And that 
habit of his life has brought him to a deeper 
respect for his father. It was the same thing 
Jacob was called to do, and it was in the same 
spirit that he tried to do it. In the end the 
government of a kingdom and the manage- 
ment of a clan call for the same qualities of 
mind and soul. It is only the scope of 
the affairs in which the qualities are exercised 
which is different. Joseph has learned to 
respect the qualities of the soul, however 
narrow be the sphere in which they are 
exercised ; and so he, before whom all Egypt 
uncovers, uncovers his head before Jacob. 

A son who stands a little higher because 
his father was there before him, gains a 
broader experience and a better training. 
Sometimes he comes back to find his father 
busy with what he is tempted to call trifling, 
parochial affairs. He does not always see 
that it needs the same powers to deal worthily 
with small things as it docs with great things. 

112 



The End : Joseph and Jacob 

Men fail at times to see that it is not the 
conditions of his work which make a man 
great, but the way he meets them : and so 
they talk about great transactions, where 
they should rather note the power of a man 
to deal with any transactions at all. Joseph 
saw behind the rough desert coat of his father 
a great soul working its way to clearness ; 
and he put off his royal ornaments and bowed 
down before Jacob. 

2, The Paternal Experience. 

Jacob could speak to such a son about his 
real life, about the things which moulded 
him and made him. He feels that he is 
finishing his course, and he tells his like- 
minded son about the matters which went 
for most and had power. It is always in- 
teresting to listen while a man talks about 
the things which mattered to him ; because 
men are so busy that in the crowd of in- 
terests they forget how, when they are done 
with things and things are done with them, 
there remain their own souls. It is often said 
that some one has died and left a great deal, 

113 



The Story of Joseph 

while it would be more correct to say that he 
has taken away all that life could give him, 
and that only what life gave him is of any 
final importance at all. When a man comes 
to the place where it seems as though every- 
thing had come to an end, the great concerns 
lift themselves up and thrust the smaller out 
of sight : and the great concerns are those 
which influenced him. Some of them, from 
the point of view of other men, are of quite 
insignificant importance : but from the point 
of view of eternity they are of quite supreme 
importance. They told upon his outlook 
and his thought, and made him what he is 
as he faces the great future. Now it is only 
the soul which faces the great future. 

There are three events which stand out 
in the old man's memory, distinct among 
the mists of time. There is the day when 
he left his father's tent and after a long 
flight slept a lonely boy on the hills at 
Bethel. He took his life into his own hands 
then for good or for ill, and set himself to 
the task of his life with the responsibility 
for it in his own hands. Hitherto he has 
114 



The End : Joseph and Jacob 

been at others' bidding, and has felt himselt 
accountable to them : now he may well feel 
as though he were accountable to none but 
himself for the way in which he bears himself 
in this new world, where he may go where 
he will and do what he will. All the world 
seems to lie before him : and he can choose, 
with no one who may determine his choice 
or examine it. That is a heady wine for a 
boy to drink. 

So there followed the night when Jacob 
saw how near God stands to human life, 
and when he recognised how there was One 
to whom he was finally responsible. It is 
a very fine thing to be free, and, with all 
the world before one, to have the opportunity 
to prove what one can do : but, like all 
other fine things, it depends for its value 
on what men do with it. There is a great 
deal of pernicious nonsense talked about 
freedom, because men fail to recognise that 
liberty is only liberty to do something, and 
the value of the liberty greatly depends on 
what men do. The worth of liberty consists 
in giving men freedom to choose, and their 

115 



The Story of Joseph 

worth consists in making the right choice. 
Jacob saw over him One who had the right 
and the intention to call him to account. 
He saw God with His claims on men, urgent 
and never to be put aside : and he saw the 
dignity and worth of his human and fugitive 
life to lie in the fact that it was something 
for which God could and did care. To that 
tremendous extent it mattered what he did 
with it. 

There followed to Jacob the day when 
he came back from Paddan-aram, "the day 
when Rachel died by me in the land of 
Canaan in the way." He lingers over that, 
not in the modern way of describing his 
feelings when it took place, but in the 
simpler way of describing the place itself. 
And in describing the place he makes one 
realise the situation. There is the sense 
of the hurried journey, as men tried to race 
with death, " when there was but a little way 
to come to Ephrath." There is the homeless- 
ness, how she who made him a home died 
" in the way." There is the inexorable nature 
of death, in that he could arrange his lodging 
ii6 



The End : Joseph and Jacob 

and his goal, but the place of the grave was 
determined for him. There is the separa- 
tion which pressed the more keenly, for it 
was on a journey, and he must push on and 
leave even the grave behind. 

That was a day that could not be forgotten 
by Jacob, when the love which had made 
life gracious was gone, and gone for ever. 
He had to leave it behind, and yet what 
made it so unforgettable was that he could 
not leave it behind. It made him what he 
was. He had livfed ; for to win love and 
to be capable of a great love is to live. Not 
merely to have won love, though that is a 
great thing, but to have spent love, to have 
given all one's love away — that is to have 
lived. A man may need to go on and leave 
that behind, but he cannot leave it behind, 
for it will not be left. He has given himself 
away : and life never seems so high and so 
wonderful as when a man has given himself 
away. 

That has been my life, Jacob seems to 
say to Joseph. I took it into my own 
hands, young, ignorant, unfriended, foolish : 
117 



The Story of Joseph 

but I took it as something which must be 
lived. I took it again out of God's hands, 
when He came to me in the night-visions, 
and spoke about responsibility and a possible 
guidance and companionship, I took it then 
as something to which He promised an end. 
I took it in love, which promised much and 
brought more. It brought life and sorrow 
and death. Few and evil have been the 
days of the years of my pilgrimage : but it 
has been a pilgrimage to an end which God 
appointed : and I have lived the days to 
the full in trust in an almighty Protector. 

And now behold I die : but God shall 
be with you. And the angel which hath 
redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads ; 
and let my name be named on them, and 
the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac : 
and let them grow into a multitude in the 
midst of the earth. 

3. The Paternal Example. 

From that death-bed, full of wise courage 
and imperishable hope, the narrator passes 
to speak of the command which Joseph gave 
118 



The End : Joseph and Jacob 

his brothers, when he himself came to die, 
that his bones were not to be left behind 
in Egypt, but to be carried up by their 
descendants into the land which God had 
sworn to give to their fathers. The incident 
is used in the New Testament as an illustra- 
tion of triumphant faith, confident, in spite 
of all seeming obstacles, that the final 
purpose of God must triumph and the 
promise of God must be proved sure. And 
such, of course, it is, though there are higher 
proofs of faith than that. The man who 
had been raised from slave to vizier, who 
had seen his father's house transferred from 
starving Palestine to fat Egypt, might find 
it easy to believe that everything was possible 
to God. Faith has stood harder tests in 
men, who, with all outward things adverse 
to their hopes, refused to suffer the lamp 
of their hope to die down. It may be, 
then, that the legacy of the bones was also 
a grim Hebrew parable to remind the people 
that they were on pilgrimage, and that by 
all the memories of their dead and all the 
hopes of their fathers they dared not settle, 
119 



The Story of Joseph 

with ungirt loins and quenched lamps, in 
fat Goshen. To associate such a legacy 
with Joseph had its peculiar significance, for 
no one knew better than he the danger 
against which he bade his nation be on their 
guard. He knew the seduction of Egypt, 
where life was secure, against the hill-land, 
where famine soon starved the inhabitants. 
He had tasted power and the delight of 
making all Egypt own the strength of an 
alien. He knew how these things stole 
round men's hearts and led them to forget 
the liberty which is among the hills and 
the patriotism which loves its land because 
of the children it breeds, and not because 
of the onions and the leeks and the garlic 
which its rich soil is capable of bearing. So 
he left the legacy of his bones as a double 
and grim reminder. They were a reminder 
of the brevity of life, lest the men should 
live as though they had all time as their 
slave and suppliant. They were a reminder 
of that better country of which they were 
appointed citizens after the purpose of God, 
although they were dwellers in Egypt for 
1 20 



The End : Joseph and Jacob 

a season. And the people were to live as 
men on a pilgrimage with their loins girt, 
ready for a journey, quick to hear their 
God's bidding, whenever it pleased Him to 
send them a summons that they go out 
as His freemen to such a city, a continuing 
city. 

After this fashion the wise-hearted Jewish 
historian told how the foundations of the 
national life were laid. He wrote of its 
outward fate, how it seemed to be the sport 
of circumstance and suffered sore things 
from famine, how it was torn from its native 
hills and lived among strangers under an 
alien sky. He told how God made kings 
its nursing fathers, and raised up out of the 
nation itself men of a clear mind and a large 
heart. He showed how their unity came, 
not merely through their owning the same 
parentage or inhabiting the same country, 
but through their inheritance of a common 
spirit which they learned to share. They 
had their heroes, whose greatness consisted 
in their unselfish devotion. But, above all, 
he told how there ran through all their 

121 



The Story of Joseph 

history a purpose which made them look 
away from earth to God. From the begin- 
ning they waited upon God, as men who, 
having gained much from His hands, always 
expected more. They were learning how 
men, in dark and difficult times, could find 
these tolerable through the power of faith. 
And everything which God made possible to 
them became a means by which He meant 
to summon them to a nobler end, and made 
more clear to their hopes some braver promise 
of His mercy. 



122 



APPENDIX 

Students, who wish to know more about the 
sources and origin of the stories which appear 
in a united form in the episode of Joseph, are 
referred to Dr. Skinner's volume on Genesis 
in the " International Critical Commentary *' 
(Scribner's, 191 1). The volume has been 
recently issued, and the author's knowledge of 
all the work which has been done on Genesis 
is wide and thorough. Hence he is able, not 
only to supply his own mature and well-con- 
sidered view of each question that arises, but 
to give references which can guide a student 
to detailed work on all such questions. 

To those who have a working knowledge 
of German, Dr. Gunkel's volume on Genesis 
can be heartily recommended. The author 
combines with sound learning a sense of 
what is meant by good literature and a flair 
for spiritual truth. 

For the history of the period any modern 
123 



Appendix 

history of Israel may be consulted with 
profit. The older histories did little more 
than extract and arrange the material offered 
by the Bible itself. One of the most com- 
petent and suggestive volumes on the subject 
is Wellhausen's Sketch of the History of Israel 
and Judah (A. & C. Black). A briefer, but 
very useful, volume is R. L. Ottley's Short 
History of the Hebrews (Cambridge University 
Press). 

Dr. Dods* volume on Genesis in the 
" Expositor's Bible " (Hodder & Stoughton) 
contains much valuable homiletic material. 
The author shows, eminently in his treat- 
ment of the Joseph story, his power of 
applying principles to the conditions of 
modern life, and is peculiarly conscious 
of the needs and difficulties which press on 
men in commercial life. The volume has 
little to offer beyond this, but all it offers 
along its own line is of value. 

On diflTerent lines but valuable and sugges- 
tive is J. Strahan's Hebrew Ideals (Scrib- 
ner's). The book is full of thoughtful work, 
and is written in a good style. 

124 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS 



Bereavement, 57, 116. 
Bewilderment, 98. 
Capacity, inherent, 8, 20. 
Character, the deepening of, 

40, 70. 
Charity, 75. 
Discipline, 25, 82. 
Dreams, interpreting of, 42, 

54. 
Environment, power of, 80. 
Envy, 8fr. 
Faith, 119. 
Family honour, 1 1 1 . 
Fear, right use of, 85. 
Forgiveness, 103. 
Freedom, 115. 
Future, key of the, 23, 
History, sacred, 7. 
Ideal, manly, 43. 
Ideals, opposing, 23, 
Ingratitude, 37. 



Life, making the most of, 28. 
Love, 76, 117. 
Mercy, 102. 
Obligation, social, 84. 
Passive, the strain of being, 

88. 
Providence, the Vindication 

of, 58 ff. 
Purpose, God*s widening, 6. 
Religion, incalculable, 45. 
Repentance, 94. 
Riches, deceitfulness of, 120. 
Righteousness, 100, 
Self-forgetfulness, 30. 
Sincerity, 103. 
Soured under injustice, 26 f. 
Success, 70 ff. 
Sympathy, 90. 
Temptation, 32. 
Vanity, 39. 
Youth and age, 53, 114. 



"5 



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SHORT COURSE SERIES 

EDITED BY 
Rev. JOHN ADAMS, B.D. 



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